


Agani

by sunryder



Series: Carving [6]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Kid Fic, M/M, Post Mpreg, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 04:27:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2053593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunryder/pseuds/sunryder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo did his best—he really did—to understand Dwarven mysticism.</p><p>But despite his best efforts on the subject, when a hunk of granite thunked down from the ceiling in his little family’s private chambers, he took it to be nothing but leftover damage from Smaug’s weight. </p><p>Of course to Thorin and Thain, the falling rock was a sign.</p><p>To them, that grey stone that had spent centuries watching over the Durin family and had chosen to throw itself at their feet because the mountain itself wanted them to have another child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Agani : Neo-Khuzdul for "Beginning"

Bilbo did his best—he really did—to understand Dwarven mysticism.

 

But despite his best efforts on the subject, when a hunk of granite thunked down from the ceiling in his little family’s private chambers, Bilbo had taken it to be nothing but leftover damage from Smaug’s weight. He’d assumed that the stonemasons would come in and check the rest of the rooms for structural integrity, since Bilbo couldn’t bear the thought of Thain hurt by falling rock. And poor, deluded innocent Bilbo expected that would be the end of it.

 

Of course to Thorin and Thain, the falling rock was a sign.

 

To them, that grey stone that had spent centuries watching over the Durin family and had chosen to throw itself at their feet because the mountain itself wanted them to have another child.

 

Now, it wasn’t that Bilbo was _against_ the idea of adding on to their family. In fact, he was downright giddy at the thought that he might actually be able to participate in the creation of one of his children. But Yavanna help him when he dared to mention that perhaps the stone had just fallen because that’s what stones _did_ after Dragons spent centuries on top of them _._ Thorin, Thain, Dis, Fili, Kili, Bofur, and every other Dwarf in the Company, as well as their kin, and what felt like every Dwarf in the whole infernal mountain gave Bilbo the same look of incredulity. An expression that screamed that they didn’t understand how such a clever creature could be quite so daft, but none of them wanted to say it aloud because that might mean no baby.

 

Which, coincidentally, was the same look Thain gave Bilbo when he tried to tell the darling boy that his Papa and Adad would always love him, no matter how many children they had. Thain had just patted him on the knee and proceeded to harangue his Dwarf father about the sketches for what his sibling might look like. (He, like his older brothers, was determined that the child ought to have the Durin eyes, no matter how much Thorin adored Bilbo’s own mottled color.)

 

The Dwarves of Erebor unanimously agreed that the rock all but throwing itself at their feet meant that Thorin should start carving straight away. However, it was Thorin’s own communion with the stone told them that it was meant to be a girl.

 

A girl with Bilbo’s riot of golden curls, and Thorin’s nose, and Thain’s feet.

 

Only, despite the hymns sung by Bilbo’s husband and son while they purified the carving room, and the tokens left by Ereborians to bring about a successful carving, and Thorin’s endless sketching upon the flecked granite to bring out a baby girl waiting for them in peaceful repose, the stone was being… difficult.

 

Thorin gave Bilbo many a lecture on the difficulty of working with granite, and that above all else, carving a child was an art, not a craft, while Thain nodded along in solidarity in the background. Bilbo didn’t have the heart to tell his Dwarves that he was almost certain that the child was just stubborn. Because when Thorin cast aside his chalk and tried to listen to what the stone was telling him, then child had her own contrary opinion about what her shape ought to be. Her shape wasn’t graceful repose that Thorin and Thain had sketched out, it was curled up tight in the kind of disconsolate ball that Thain assumed when he was unwilling to get out of bed.

 

She had her knees folded up to her chest, her feet tucked tight against her bum, and her face smushed into the cradle of her elbows. Thankfully, one wrist managed to stick out enough that Thorin could actually carve the seven stars of Durin into her skin and perform the ritual that might bring her life.

 

Thorin denied being worried about the process, but he’d stayed up for three days straight doing nothing but carving, just to see if the stone was willing to even give them the chance to breathe life into the child. Bilbo on the other hand, hadn’t been worried at all. But his theories of a stubborn child were being ignored as Hobbit nonsense. After all, the Dwarves believed the stone had no personality until the child was actually in it and breathing. (Every time that was mentioned, Bilbo cast a speaking look to Thain, who refused to look up from his feet and acknowledge all that he remembered from being carved.)

 

Wrapped up though their daughter was, Thorin spent all his effort on the perfect line of her spine, each little mountain and valley of her bones crafted as strong and intractable as the mountain that had given her stone for carving. Thorin gave her the hair of a Hobbit lass, with spiral curls that fell well past her shoulders. Thain liked to sit with his father in the chamber, and after a few minutes of Thorin saying what he _would_ have carved if he’d been able to, Thain prodded his father along to the Eddas of their ancestors.

 

Bilbo spent the same amount of time on the stories of his own people, which Thain listened to with baited breath. With more of Thain’s prodding, Bilbo told his son and daughter about the mangy bunch of Dwarves who’d turned up on his front step and the adventure they’d dragged him on. Whatever else he might share, Bilbo liked to end their conversations with Thain wrapped in his arms while they told their darling girl that she might be whoever she wanted to be, and look like whoever she wanted to. They just wanted her to be healthy and happy, and nothing else mattered.

 

(Whatever it was that Thain told his sister in their private conversations, Bilbo didn’t know. The devious little thing would curl up beside his stone sibling and murmur whispered words into the pointed ear that peaked through a riot of curls.)


	2. Chapter 2

The day finally arrived for the three of them to ask their daughter and sister to come into the world.

 

Thain swung from Bilbo’s hands as they made their way down to the carving place, and Thorin tried to smile at their antics, but he was too nervous to play along. Bilbo had listened to his Dwarves explain the process of carving life into a child so many times that he didn’t think he could be surprised by anything about it. The moment the door sealed behind them, locking them in the sacred space until the process was complete, Bilbo realized that there were no words to explain the echoing stillness of that room; the hungry silence waiting to know if they were worthy of the gift they sought.

 

In the dark of their bedchamber, Thorin had whispered to Bilbo about the long hours he’d spent just staring at their child before he’d said the sacred words over Thain. How he’d summoned up every scrap of his courage so he might be strong enough to even try. Now that the moment was actually upon them, Bilbo wished he’d been a bit more sympathetic to Thorin’s plight. (At the time, Bilbo had reminded Thorin that perhaps he might’ve been a bit less terrified if he’d had Thain’s other father with him.) 

 

Today though, Thain was not in the mood to let either of his fathers panic. While they froze in the doorway, he climbed straight onto the altar and laid down beside his sister, wrapping one warm hand around a stone fist.

 

Just as Thorin had done with his firstborn son, he took a chisel and gently tapped the arc of Durin’s seven stars into the pad of his child’s palm. He took extra care to get every star where it ought to be on the clenched folds of skin. Then in the tender stone of the wrist, Thorin etched the secret rune that stood for his own name, and the intertwined B’s that spoke of Bilbo. With the ritual done, he laid down his tools and wrapped his arms around Bilbo. Whie Thorin worked, he Hobbit had been standing beside his children, running his fingers through Thain’s curls and brushing along his daughter’s rocky mop.

 

With his husband in his arms and his children before him, Thorin breathed out the words that he had never dared speak outside of this ceremony. But still, Bilbo felt he already knew them deep in his bones.

 

“Eru Illúvatar, father and creator of us all. I desire this thing other than I am, to love and to teach him, so that he too might perceive the beauty of Eä, which thou hast caused to be. May Eru bless my work and amend it.”

 

Bilbo held his breath and refused to blink, not wanting to miss his daughter’s first moment of life. Only, he stood there patiently waiting, and nothing happened. She didn’t cry, she didn’t breathe, she didn’t twitch. “Thorin?” Bilbo croaked.

 

Thorin tightened his hold on Bilbo and murmured, “Wait, beloved. Just wait.”

 

But still nothing happened. At least, nothing happened until Thain gave the little hand a sharp squeeze and grumbled. “Get on with it. You’ve got people waiting on you. And if you keep being naughty Papa Bilbo won’t make you any cake.”

 

At that, the skin began to pink and the chest expanded and contracted in time with the child’s long, slow breaths. Soon, the little fist unclenched and wrapped around its brother’s hand, bound so tightly together that Bilbo couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.

 

Bilbo sank down to his knees beside the altar, hoping to finally catch a glimpse of his child. At the shuffle, a single grey eye peeked over the crook of an elbow, pausing just long enough to narrow into a glower at Thain before turning to take in the sight of its waiting parents. Bilbo fought to keep himself just where he knelt. He and Thorin had agreed to let Thain greet his sister first, but Bilbo ached to burst forward and wrap both his children up in his arms.

 

From the scant bits of his child’s face that Bilbo could actually see, he could make out the hard line of the Durin nose—which Thorin had _not_ intended since he preferred the Baggins button shared by his husband and firstborn. Bilbo also caught the hint of Thorin’s sharp cheekbones buried beneath plump baby fat, cheeks with an embarrassed blush spreading across them.

 

A blush shared by Thain.

 

The little hand gave its brother a reassuring squeeze before it pushed at Thain’s shoulder to nudge him forward. Thain gulped back the urge to dive off the table and leave his sibling to fend for itself. Thain sat up to appear a bit more presentable, before he gave in to Bilbo’s own nervous twitch and straightened out the ever-present wrinkles in his shirt. With a careful choice of words, Thain managed to eek out, “Adad, Papa, we might have forgotten to mention something.”

 

The new child snapped out a hand to pinch Thain, silently declaring that there was no ‘we’ in this. After all, Thain had been the one who could actually _speak_ about it while his sibling had been silent stone. The dearth of information on their parent’s part was all Thain’s doing.

 

Wrapped around Bilbo like he was, Bilbo could feel Thorin freeze in worry, while Bilbo, Bilbo just laughed. For all that Thorin was the one to craft their children’s bodies, Bilbo tended to forget that it was his spirit that shaped their souls. And it seemed that Bilbo had passed on his unpredictable Tookish nature to his children.

 

After months of carving and careful worlds, the child had stayed tucked up in its stone ball to thwart its parent’s careful plans, and do what it wanted instead of what it was told.

 

Which meant that Thain and his sister had been diligently hiding that she… was a _son_.

 


	3. Chapter 3

As much as Bilbo loved his husband, in moments like these the Dwarf was useless.

 

Threaten the things he loved and Thorin Oakenshield was a force to be reckoned with, but as him to handle his frustrations with delicacy and poise, and you might as well have asked Bilbo to mine you a diamond. (Both of them would be stumbling through the dark only to end up smashing what they meant to save.) So while his husband sputtered something about impossibilities behind him, Bilbo shimmied onto the altar and wrapped his sons up in a hug. He peppered his newborn’s face with kisses, pausing just long enough to let Thain pull out a leather tie and bind his brother’s long hair up into an out-of-the-way knot.

 

Like Fili was to Kili, Bilbo’s youngest was handsome in a way that was both decidedly Durin and yet… not.

 

The babe had Thorin’s nose—which he’d grow into someday, but on his first morning looked a bit too big for his face. Eventually his face would thin and his lines would harden to match the stone-hewn look of his father’s people, but always he would have Bilbo’s hair. Though, given his youngest child’s general attitude of rebellion, Bilbo was almost certain that soon he’d go in to wake up his boys and find the youngest with his hair all shorn off to look like Dwalin. (Bilbo made a mental note to make it clear to his boys that if they wanted to cut hair, Bilbo would be involved in the process. Just to prevent the out and out massacre of soft, baby curls.)

 

Abandoning all dignity—as Bilbo supposed the poor fellow was going to have to get used to with children—Thorin crawled atop the table after his husband and scooped his baby boy into his arms. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve carved you into whatever you’d wished if I’d known.”

 

The boy pet one small hand across Thorin’s cheek, like he was soothing a startled horse. Thain translated the gesture for his fathers. “He wasn’t sure yet what he wanted to be when we asked him, and then you and I got so excited about having a sister that he didn’t want to upset us. That’s why he decided to be carved curled up like that, so he’d have some extra time to decide if he wanted to give being a girl a try.”

 

Thorin wound his fingers through the tangled mess of his son’s hair and tilted back they boy’s little head to look him clean in the eye. “You never have to hide from me, dear one. Your life is your own, and I will do everything in my power to make sure that you get to live it for yourself. For what will bring you joy.”

 

The boy buried his face in Thorin’s neck, so small against Thorin’s bulk. Some part of the boy had been worried that his parents might be disappointed with his choice. It was a relief to know that they’d love him anyway. Thain had promised him that they would, but he liked to know things for himself.

 

Thain crawled into Bilbo’s lap while his father and brother snuggled. “The name we had for you doesn’t quite fit anymore. Although,” Thain giggled at the exaggerated pinch of his papa’s lips, “I’d lay down good money that the two of you already have that picked out, don’t you?”

 

Bilbo’s bright laughter following after Thain’s giggles was enough to drag out a grin from the child. He dropped a quick kiss to Thorin’s chin then scrambled over to Bilbo’s lap where they might consult with their Papa and make sure their choice was sound before they told him. (It was only fair after all, since Thorin had named Thain without Bilbo’s input.) Thorin left them to it, certain that he was seeing what the rest of his life would be like: him sitting by while his sons conspired with his Hobbit. And Thorin couldn’t wait.

 

The youngest child pressed his mouth to Bilbo’s pointed ear and whispered just the one word, while at the other ear Thain rambled about all about the why, and “Don’t you think it’s perfect, Papa?”

 

Out of the corner of his eye, Bilbo could see Thorin twitch forward, wanting to hear the sound of his new son’s voice. But he kept himself back with a soft smile. Bilbo supposed the whole mess might be worth it since somewhere along the last few months Thorin had figured out that Hobbits were not creatures to be pushed, no matter their Dwarven paternity.

 

Bilbo smacked a kiss to the crowns of each of his sons and whispered to them in just the same way that he loved their choice. It was perfect. And they were perfect. Thain puffed out his chest in pride while his brother blushed in pleasure. Bilbo straightened up towards Thorin and cleared his throat, “Ahem. You may now approach.”

 

Thorin grinned and slipped into his family’s space, tucking his sons safely between him and his husband. “I, Bilbo Baggins, Consort Under the Mountain, and my son, Thain Baggins, Prince Under the Mountain, are overjoyed to present to you our son and brother, Frain Baggins.” Thorin quirked an eyebrow, not quite sure how his family had come to that name.

 

“You named Thain for both your line and mine, and Frain,” Bilbo trailed his fingers over the bound curls. “Frain wanted to be named for something closer. The end of his name matches his beloved brother. While the beginning…” Bilbo trailed off, and couldn’t help the slight sheen to his eyes at the thought. “The beginning shall speak to a brother we wish was here.”

 

Thorin swallowed back the thought of his long-dead brother, and that his sons would never need to know that ache. He put aside his grief to take in the boys before him, and the husband he had wrapped in his arms. They were home.

**Author's Note:**

> sunryder.tumblr.com
> 
> FYI, I'm accepting prompts for this story over there, so I can keep going on ignoring the trailer.


End file.
